


the world anew

by heartofstanding



Category: 15th Century CE RPF
Genre: Class Differences, F/M, First Kiss, Forbidden Love, Getting Together, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28569003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofstanding/pseuds/heartofstanding
Summary: When he sings, his voice is fairer still. She closes her eyes and imagines herself on a sea of green grass, the wind in her loosened hair and forgets for a time that she is in the bower England has made for her.
Relationships: Catherine de Valois Queen of England/Owain ap Maredudd ap Tewdwr | Owen Tudor
Comments: 9
Kudos: 15
Collections: Histories Ficathon XI





	the world anew

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FeuillesMortes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeuillesMortes/gifts).



Catherine wears the gowns and wimples of a widow for two years before they begin to chafe at her. Her skin prickles, the embroidered velvet sits too heavily on her shoulders and drags her down. Her dead husband has become a shadow that looms over her and her son but he disappears like smoke in a breeze as soon as she seeks him in her memories.

She loved him once, she thinks. Or she felt she should or she wanted to love someone who treated her gently, even if he was not a gentle man. But he left – he died – and his memory is a cruel, black void she cannot comprehend, cannot love, cannot satisfy herself with.

Her age seems like a cruel thing too for she is young and the years are long, an endless stretch of time. Her son is only three years old but he is already king of two nations and she can only ever hold a part of him. Her days are empty, the walls of her palace oppressive, and she is caged. Sometimes, Catherine thinks of her mother, longs for her, and wonders what Isabeau would have done if she had been widowed like Catherine had been widowed. What Isabeau would do when faced with nothing but never-ending time.

*

There is Edmund Beaufort and Catherine doesn’t love him but she thinks she might love who he would let her be. He is worshipful, kneeling to kiss her hands and speak honeyed words, and she imagines going to bed with him – her skin shivers when it touches his; she has been too long alone. If they married, he tells her, they would give him a title. She would no longer be a dowager queen, kept quiet and shut-up, but a countess who will be free to do as she wishes.

She is carried away. She does not love him but that will not matter. He will let her do as she wants.

The council will not. They do not allow her marriage and worse, introduces a law that prevents her from remarrying until her son is of age, another eternity away. Edmund retreats, and she is alone again, her hopes dashed to pieces.

*

She notices him when he arrives. He is a handsome man amongst the crowd of her servants. She doesn’t know his name – if her steward ever told her, she has forgotten it. He performs his duties well but there is a mocking light in his eyes and a sly twist in his benign smile as if his heart does not bend when his body bows.

He is Welsh. His voice is lilting-fair.

She speaks English well but her accent marks her out, he speaks English well but his accent marks him out. They are outsiders, strangers in a land not their own. Her fingertips ache to touch him, to hold his hand and feel that she is not alone.

When he sings, his voice is fairer still. She closes her eyes and imagines herself on a sea of green grass, the wind in her loosened hair and forgets for a time that she is in the cold bower England has made for her.

It is almost enough to content her.

*

There is music. Owen does not play – he says he cannot, that his fingers are all thumbs on the strings of a harp, and he imitates his attempts to play the pipes with explosive breaths that make her giggle behind her hand – but he dances. She does not, though she wants to as it is not proper for a widow to dance. Still, she watches. Her eyes do not leave his.

Owen lacks the finesse of other dancers. He has a fierce energy and is too impatient to move his body in the fine movements that the music calls for. It makes him look clumsy but he is not a clumsy man. Her dead husband did not dance but he played the harp with such skill she was embarrassed to play in front of him, though he endured her efforts with attentive patience and offered no criticism.

Owen falls. Someone shouts laughter. Her hands are raised, ready to clap, and he tumbles into her lap. She stares down at him and he meets her gaze with his bold eyes. Her face becomes still and she thinks, _no._

She should not love him. It is impossible. There are laws to say she cannot. He is her servant. She is the queen, the foremost woman in the land.

He leaps up and bows down low. Her cheeks flush crimson and she laughs, grants her pardon with an ease that she does not feel. Her heart is pounding into her chest, sweat building on her palms, her belly tight.

‘Well, perhaps you will dance better with your queen’s blessing,’ she says and offers him her hand to kiss.

‘Perhaps I will,’ he says.

He presses his mouth against the back of her hand, his fingers brushing over hers. His lips feel as hot as a brand.

*

They go hunting. Not alone but with her ladies and servants. It is easy to slip away from the watch of her women, easier still to find him alone by a creek of fast-flowing water, cast in deep shadows by the canopies of trees far above them. The dogs are barking, the horns are singing but distantly. The cold, damp shadow makes her shiver and he steps forward without deference and reaches to take her hands.

‘Are you cold?’ he says.

‘You should not touch me,’ she says but does not pull back.

‘I touch you with my eyes all the time,’ he says. ‘You do not complain. Perhaps because you do the same to me.’

‘You forget your place,’ she says.

‘My place? No, your grace, I do not forget that,’ he says. ‘I am not allowed to forget that.’

His smile is mocking, cruel, and his eyes are shadowed and hard. She does not want him to be hard and cruel. His hands release her and she steps back, stumbling. She should go. She knows this. She cannot love him, she should not. She does not leave.

‘We do not live in the same world,’ she says.

‘Do we not?’

He bends in one long movement, plucks up a stone from the floor. It is a smooth, grey stone, a line of white running through the middle. He holds it out to her. She does not take it.

‘I would say we breathe the same air, walk the same ground.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘That you are high and I am low?’

‘No!’ she cries, cheeks turning crimson. The hounds are baying in the distance. ‘No. You are not – low.’

‘But you are high?’

‘I am the daughter of a king, the wife of a king and the mother of another.’

‘Widow,’ he says. ‘Not wife.’

She smiles.

‘Sometimes,’ she says, ‘I think they would’ve liked to have buried me with him. It would have been easier.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Let him lie alone.’

He steps forward as he speaks, voice urgent, and then stops, hands outstretched. She takes his hand and holds it to her chest, where he may feel the shape of her breast and the beat of her heart. It is shamefully wanton. It is what she wants. Her eyes turn down, see his sun-browned hand over her white one, and the green silk of her hunting gown. He kneels suddenly, knees digging into the moss-covered ground.

‘Lady,’ he said. ‘There is no world if there is no love.’

He presses the stone into her hand. It fits, perfectly. She kneels too, cupping his head between her palms and bringing it down to kiss.

‘I will take you as my husband,’ Catherine whispers against his mouth, the bold words falling like autumn leaves.

Owen’s eyes close. ‘And I will take you as my wife.’

*

He comes to her in the night on swift, light feet, moving through the darkness with the dexterity of a cat. A candle has been left burning, it illuminates a paltry circle in soft light and leaves the rest in shadows. She offers him her hand, he holds it tight. Tomorrow, they will find a priest to say the rites and bless their union.

‘Will you vow yourself to me again?’ he says.

‘I will,’ she says. ‘I do.’

Now she knows that time can be sweet. She will – she already does – long for her days to go on without end. Her heart will beat against his and he will be hers and she will be his. They will leave the dead to lie alone in cold stone, councils to grumble, gossips to gasp and make the world anew for themselves.


End file.
